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Abstract:
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This paper studies class discrimination and meritocracy in the Chilean labor
market. Employing a dataset rich in productivity and class measures, we find
that upper-class professionals earn approximately 50 per cent more than those
raised in lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This gap is unrelated to differences
in academic performance at university, second language proficiency, postgraduate
studies, schools’ academic quality, geographic origin and other standard
controls, which suggests some employer discrimination. This gap is larger
than gaps reported elsewhere for gender, race and physical appearance.
Meritocracy is modest, as the effect of socioeconomic background on earnings
outweighs that of academic performance at university. |